My praetors and I step out of the flux rift into the unfamiliar landscape. Strange. Looks a bit like Mars. Hold on… I grab a red rock from the ground and look around. The landscape is littered with canyons and holes. I look up to see a giant glass dome above our heads. What I see past it is what shocks me: Earth. Holy shit. This is Mars.

I have to time to ponder this, however; several humanoid figures covered head to toe in what appears to be some sort of Kevlar. They’re holding long menacing guns. "Put your hands in the fucking air!" I instruct the praetors to follow their orders and we put our hands in the air.

"We don’t want any trouble. If I may ask, what year is it?" The guards give each other confused glances before one says, "It’s 2504."

----------------------------------------

Apparently, as I would come to learn, this dimension is a mirror of my home dimension, except it was created 481 years earlier. Practically nothing on a cosmic scale, but on a scale of human advancement, astronomically huge. As I would also find out, the reason the praetors were able to breathe on Mars (I don’t need oxygen to survive) was that the giant dome we were under had been terraformed to be suitable for human life. Finally, and most interestingly of all, I noticed that this universe did not use vis in any capacity, which made sense if there were no gods of magic making spells able to be cast without a casting apparatus.

The guards escorted us to a large metal structure with many windows and hundreds of people walking in and out. Must be some sort of research laboratory. "Why are you arresting us?" I ask.

"We detected that you emerged from a rift in spacetime," one guard responds. "We have no idea of your intentions or capabilities." Fair enough. As we make our way into the building, the guards lead each praetor into a separate enclosed room, presumably for questioning. After about half an hour of waiting, a woman in a white lab coat enters the room.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"My name is Lena, and I’ll be asking you a few questions. Excuse me if I seem nervous, but this is our first contact with extra-dimensional life." She says this with a hint of excitement in her voice.

"I assume you’re going to give me my spear back when I leave?"

"Of course," she says. "Now, how did you end up in this dimension?" I tell her about the flux rifts and vis.

"By any chance, do you have any gods here?" Lena hesitates and looks at the one-way mirror on the wall. After a brief moment of pause, she looks back at me.

"So gods are everywhere, and not just here, huh? We sort of have a goddess of technology, but she uploaded her consciousness into a massive database a few years ago to stop herself from aging. Funny you ask, gods are the one thing we haven’t been able to explain with science yet."

"Science can’t fix any problem. Can I go now?" Lena stutters over her own words before I cut her off. "If it’s my intentions you’re worried about, then worry not. As soon as I get what I came for I will leave this dimension with my followers."

"Which is?" I am reluctant to answer. Surely they won’t let us willingly leave if I flat out say I’m here to kill their god and harvest its soul.

"I want to extend the scope of humanity’s knowledge and offer your god a way of communicating with gods from other dimensions. I have to meet her in person to do that, though."

"Sorry, I don’t think the higher ups will let us do that."

"Who exactly do you work for anyways?"

"Well, this facility is owned by the United States, and I am also employed under them." Heh. They’re still around after 400 years?

"Listen up. I want the people watching me from behind that mirror to listen as well. You’ve just made contact with the first inter-dimensional life ever. Do you want to be remembered as the people who made peaceful contact and established an inter-dimensional communication, or the people that turned us away?"

Lena’s face goes straight. She looks to the mirror and touches something in her ear. As she does this, the door to the room opens and several men in black suits are waiting outside for me. "We’ve decided to let you see her."

"Well then, let’s not waste any time."